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Guinea Seethes as a Captain Rules at Gunpoint

Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, chief of the ruling junta, arrives to pay homage at Martyrs Place in Conakry on Friday, during celebrations commemorating the Republic of Guinea's independence day.Credit
Luc Gnago/Reuters

CONAKRY, Guinea — At the military camp where he makes decisions — he does not care for government buildings — the captain who is president explained why he did not get to the political rally earlier this week that his soldiers turned into a bloodbath.

Moussa Dadis Camara, 45, this nation’s erratic new leader, said he could not find the keys to his pickup.

Three days after the massacre Monday in which as many as 157 people died protesting Captain Camara’s military rule, he rambled on to a gathering of reporters till nearly midnight as aides fidgeted under giant portraits of their leader. Then he offered to send the reporters to nightclubs.

“Whatever you want, at whatever time,” said Captain Camara, clad in the fatigues he never sheds. “On my tab, as chief of state.” For some reason he added, “I am incorruptible.”

This lush coastal nation of 10 million, rich in minerals and tropical fruits, and dark at night from lack of electricity, has known harsh dictators and army shooting sprees in its 51 years of independence. Neighbors to the north and to the south have experienced bloody civil wars; Guinea, the former French colony that angered Charles de Gaulle with its refusal of partnership, and locked up tight for decades under tyrant ideologues, was too brutalized to unravel.

But it has never known a week, or even a 10-month period, quite like the last one.

Captain Camara, an unknown junior officer, seized power last December, declared war on the drug lords who had held sway, interrogated corrupt flunkies of the previous regime on television and locked them up, and briefly transfixed fellow citizens with his 8 o’clock on-camera extemporizing. It felt, for a rare moment, like hope.

But as the government withered into Captain Camara’s small office at the sprawling Alpha Yaya Diallo military encampment, where aides wore fatigues and twirled AK-47s, and businessmen and officials could wait for days for an appointment, the citizens turned away.

On Monday, thousands demonstrated in the soccer stadium here in the capital against Captain Camara’s intimations of wanting to keep power — an ambition he denied when he first took over.

Witnesses say his men mowed many down at point-blank range. They beat and knifed many more, bashing elderly political figures and sending them to hospitals.

Captain Camara, offering only muted apologies for the deaths, sought to shift blame to the protesters.

“It wasn’t a peaceful march; it was premeditated, it was intentional,” he told reporters Thursday night in a rambling hourlong monologue that included disquisitions on Machiavelli, the character of a “Republican” army, the best way of mounting a coup d’état and a call he said he had received that day from the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

He said the demonstration “had the character of wanting to overthrow a chief of state.”

Most shocking to the wearied citizens in this predominantly Muslim nation, Captain Camara’s men raped scores of women in broad daylight, sexually assaulting many with rifles. For five days this week Conakry has seethed in sullen, silent anger, as many people remained missing following Monday’s demonstration, heavily armed soldiers patrolled, rumors flew about secret midnight burials by government security forces, and text-message and much cellphone traffic was blocked. Shops have remained shuttered and streets that are normally clogged have been empty.

On Friday, the anger began to boil over. The government, trying to still it, trucked in bodies of what it said were victims of the massacre. In the broiling heat a huge crowd milled about a giant field next to the main mosque here, Faycal, glancing at the stiff, shrouded corpses that were placed under tents on wooden planks, searching for missing brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers.

Photo

Up to 157 demonstrators died in Conakry, the capital. Credit
The New York Times

But there were at most a few dozen bodies, while up to 1,000 people had turned out. Hardly anyone in the surging crowd was finding loved ones.

“I lost my brother!” many called out, holding up photographs. “I lost my sister!” others cried, imploring foreign visitors to help them.

“The bodies that are here, they don’t represent all who died,” said Sekou Keita, who said his younger brother was missing. The bodies on display bore no obvious traces of bullet wounds; the shrouds had no blood. Some in the crowd said the government had simply brought in bodies from the local hospitals — victims of illness, not gunshots.

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Cries against Captain Camara rang out, though it was impossible to say if it was anguish or the first shouts of revolt. “All those cockroaches in the Dadis government can get lost,” yelled a man, Alpha Oumar Diallo, to roars of approval.

The furious crowd ripped the clothes off a man who was said to be a government minister. Security forces later broke up the crowd with tear gas.

Coincidentally, this was Guinea’s day of national independence. But few were celebrating, except for Captain Camara.

In silence, wearing fatigues and mirrored sunglasses, and surrounded by eight pickup trucks full of armed soldiers, he laid a wreath at a downtown monument in the shadow of an abandoned eight-story hotel. Only a few dozen people looked on, wordlessly.

Djouma Bah, who owns a photography studio and was ignoring the ceremony, said, “They want to have their celebrations, the authorities, but there should be mourning, burying of the bodies.”

The keeper of a street stall, Mohammed Djoubate, said: “Nobody is happy now. We are all just tired.”

Military aides tried to quiet their boss and shoo reporters away, but Captain Camara launched into a monologue as he left the monument to the sound of a brass band.

“History will triumph,” he said. “It’s the awakening of Africa.”

Captain Camara, trying to overcome a tide of international opprobrium, earlier called for a government of “national unity.” But a leader of the opposition Union of Republican Forces, a former prime minister, Sidya Touré, said in an interview at his home here that this would not occur.

“A dialogue with these people would be useless,” said Mr. Touré, still wearing a bandage on his head from the beating he received at Monday’s demonstration. He said he saw top aides to Captain Camara at the stadium, directing the violence.

“The ministries have disappeared,” said Mr. Touré, who called for the interposition of an international force to counter the “barbarian horde” that has weapons.

The citizens were “profoundly traumatized” by what had happened to the women at the stadium, he said. “These people are not interested in democracy. They are interested in pillaging the country.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 3, 2009, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Guinea Seethes as a Captain Rules at Gunpoint. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe